A collection of vegetarian/vegan food supremacy

Tag Archives: cake

It’s apple season, so this was a natural choice for the sweet recipe. This is another recipe from Linda Majzlik’s book A Vegan Taste of Eastern Europe. A minus side in the book is that nearly everything is measured in grams. I prefer measuring in dl/cups, and we’ve converted grams to desilitres here, and we used fresh yeast instead of dry. Our cake looks a bit silly, because we baked it in star shaped tin. The cake would be even better with bigger amount of apples.

Hungarian Apple Cake

Mix the flour and 0,75 dl brown sugar in a bowl. Peel, core and grate one apple and add it with margarine to the pot. Combine well. Warm the soy milk to lukewarm and dissolve yeast in it. Add it to the bowl and knead to form a nice soft dough. Cover with a towel and allow to rise an hour. Knead again and put in a greased cake tin, pressing it out to fill the tin. Cover with a towel and let rise 40 minutes. Peel, core and slice the other apple. Arrange the slices on the cake and press them lightly. Mix 1 tsp brown sugar with 1 tsp cinnamon and sprinkle on top. Cover with a foil and bake 20 minutes in 200 Celsius degrees. Remove the foil and bake 10 more minutes. Carefully remove from the tin onto a wire rack to cool before slicing.

Russian candy (kinuski in Finnish, kola in Swedish) is a common dessert sauce or cake frosting here. It’s made by simmering cream and brown sugar until they reach desired thickness. Sauce is usually eaten with ice cream and/or berries. Acid of the berries is a nice contrast to the sweetness of Russian candy.

I’ve also made a gluten free version of this cake by using gluten free flour mix (Semper Fin Mix) instead of wheat flour and substituting bread crumbs with gluten free bread crumbs, coconut flakes or crushed almonds. If you have a teflon tin, greasing is probably enough and you can omit bread crumbs.

Russian Candy and Lingonberry Cake

Mix wheat flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl. Add rhubarb jam and oil and stir. Last add the mineral water. Grease a cake tin with margarine and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Pour the batter to the tin and bake in 200 Celsius degrees for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

filling:
lingonberry jam**
vegan whipping cream (+ sugar)

russian candy:
1,5 dl oat (or soy) cream
1,5 dl brown sugar

Cut the cooled cake in two or three layers. Whip the cream and season with sugar if necessary. Fill the cake with lingonberry jam and whipped vegan cream.

Mix the oat cream and brown sugar in a sauce pan. Heat on medium heat, constantly stirring, until it starts bubbling. Simmer constantly stirring until it’s thick enough. Usually it takes 10-15 minutes. How do you know it’s thick enough? Take a glass of cold water and add a drop of Russian candy. If it dissolves into the water, it’s not ready. If you can take it in your hand and it’s like soft plasticine, it’s ready. Quickly pour the Russian candy on top of the cake and spread with a spatula. Allow to set in refrigerator. Decorate the sides with whipped cream.

*You can also use apple jam or mashed banana instead of rhubarb jam.
**Other berries, like cloudberries, raspberries or cranberries go well with Russian candy too.

Restaurant day on Saturday went well. We served chili, Caribbean lentil soup, Mexican chocolate cake, pumpkin muffins, coffee and tea. All the food was ready when we opened our restaurant, and they tasted good. More customers would have been welcome, we had quite a lot of leftovers. One reason for lack of customers could have been the freezing weather, and some people may not feel comfortable about going to strangers’ homes to eat. Next Restaurant Day will be in May, and maybe then we’ll have an outdoor restaurant again.

Even if we didn’t have many customers, I don’t have a reason to complain. We got enough money to cover the expenses and we got plenty of food for ourselves. We didn’t have to cook for ourselves on the weekend and we still have some soup and chili in the freezer. It was also nice to eat muffins on Sunday while we played Ticket to Ride board game with our friends, and my coworkers were very pleased, because I served the leftover cake on coffee break at work. Couple of them also asked for the recipe, and if you’re interested, check here. It’s delicious and very easy to make.

Once again, we were too busy with cooking and serving and forgot to take photos.

Put the Digestives in a plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin. Melt the margarine and combine with Digestive crumbs. Cover the bottom of a springform pan with parchment paper and spread the Digestive-margarine-mixture on it. Refrigerate about half an hour.

Mix lemon juice, peach can liquid and agar agar in a pot and boil 10-15 minutes. Whip the cream, puree the peach halves and combine with yogurt and vanilla sugar. Dye green. Allow the agar agar mixture to cool for couple or minutes and add to the green mixture. Pour on the digestive crust and refrigerate for few hours.

Mix orange juice and agar agar in a pot and boil 10-15 minutes. Pour on top of the cake and refrigerate couple of hours.

I made this cake couple of months ago when we had fresh local plums, but didn’t post the recipe here. This is so flat that it looks more like a pie, but I think it’s still a cake because it’s made of cake batter. The plums turn tangy in the oven, so I recommend using very ripe and sweet plums.

Plum and Vanilla Cake

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and vanilla sugar in a bowl. Melt the margarine and add it and oat milk to the bowl. Stir quickly together. Cover a bottom of a springform pan (25-28cm diameter) with parchment paper and grease sides with margarine. Spread the batter to the pan and sprinkle plum pieces on it. Spoon vanilla yogurt on top and bake 30 minutes in 200 Celsius degrees. Baking time is longer if you have smaller pan.

If you don’t have a springform pan, you can make the cake in a pie dish and serve it in it.

I have made tosca cake with eggs and dairy couple of times in my life and today I made my first vegan version. It was quite ok, but not as good as it could have been. The cake itself doesn’t necessarily need improvement, but next time I’ll use oat or soy milk to see if it makes it even better. The almond topping is the thing that needs to be improved, it’s supposed to be crunchy, but mine was too crunchy and the taste wasn’t as good as I wanted. It looked too thick before I even spread it on the cake, so next time I’ll use 0,5dl oat or soy milk instead of 0,25 dl water. It should make less thick and maybe it makes it taste right too. If not, I’ll try to add more sugar. I think the recipe is worth sharing even it’s not perfect and I have no problem with serving it to my mother tomorrow.

Beat margarine and sugar until creamy. Add apple jam and stir well. Combine wheat flour, baking powder and vanilla sugar in another bowl and add them and water to margarine and sugar mixture and mix everything together. Grease a springform pan (about 27 cm diameter) with margarine and sprinkle with crushed almonds. Bake in 200 Celsius degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Make the tosca: Melt the margarine in a pot. Add sugar, flour and water and bring to boil stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in sliced almonds. Spread the tosca on the cake and bake another 10-15 minutes.